Effects of job design on employees performance; a case study of Equity bank

Abstract

The world is changing: the evidence is all around us. Markets are growing and becoming more competitive and dynamic. The systems and methods that once served to hold organizations together are now more likely to inhibit communication and demotivate employees. Managers now need to take account of the changing attitudes and expectations of employees. They need to find new ways to organizing work so that it allows more flexibility and brings motivation and job satisfaction to employees. For any organization to have productive employees and also to maximize on production work re-designing is vital. Influencing concepts that are highlighted include skill variety, role identity, job feedback, job significance, accountability, empowerment, autonomy, knowledge, self efficacy, interdependence, emotional identity, and social identity. The literature suggests that there is a need for methods and tools that organizations can utilize to design, implement, and evaluate job redesigns. Although some strategies are presented (such as task clustering, goal setting, case management, and job crafting), it is apparent that further research is required to enhance the current understanding of job redesign and its potential for optimizing banking scopes of practice and ultimately, improving customer satisfaction outcomes and banking recruitment and retention issues. The major problem is poor performance due to management failure to redesign work employees performance would affect a company's performance positively or negatively. The researcher found out the effects of work design on employee performance, and also identified the factors that should be considered when designing jobs. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of job design on employees' performance at Equity bank in Kenya and which factors of job design highly influence on employees' performance in the organizations. The study was conducted by using a random sample of five strata from the bank which included corporate customers, tellers, department managers, operations managers and branch managers. The unit of analysis was organizational level; each strata. Measures of the study were of good quality after assuring reliability and validity. Data were collected from 180 respondents which was 69% response rate. The results of the study showed a significant and positive relationship between perceived level of job design and perceived degree of employees' performance in the banks. The researcher found that a relationship was significant implying that a bank should adopt an effective task identity, autonomy and feedback in order to improve employees' performance.